Should the following abbreviations be punctuated?

Hello,

St or St. for Street
Ave or Ave. for Avenue
N or N. for North
etc.

Thank you.

You can use the abbreviations with or without punctuation. The U.S. Postal Service doesn't use punctuationbut generally it's just a matter of personal preference.

There is a difference between AE and BE usage. AE puts a period after every abbreviation. (There is an exception for some units of measurementwith "mm" treated as an alternative shorter form of "millimeter" rather than an abbreviation in the usual sense even though it originated as oneand so on for other units. If there are other exceptionsI'm not aware of them.) BE uses a period only if the last letter of the original word was removed. Thus"Mr." for "Mister" and "St" for "Street" would have a period in AE but (as I understand BE usageand subject to correction by a Brit) not in BE.

The U.S. Postal Service doesn't concern itself with the rules of English usage when it specifies address formats. Its top concernprobably its only oneis how easy it is for sorting machines to read an address. I don't think its recommendations carry any weight unless one is addressing mailor at least writing an address to be used for that purpose later.

In formal writingnot addressing envelopes for mass mailingsU.S. usage is to put a period after every abbreviation. My understanding is that BE does not do this if the abbreviation includes the last letter of the abbreviated word; thusabbreviations for "Mister" or "Fort" (Mr and Ft respectively) would not have a period. "St." for "street" wouldbecause it is a truncationbut "St" for "Saint" would not.

Or maybe it's the other way around. Abbreviations without periods always look peculiar to me.

In my city none of the street signs have periods after Ave or St or Blvd if that means anything.

In BEabbreviations generally do not require punctuation.
The middle path isas has been suggestedto include a full stop (period) if the abbreviation does not include first and last letters - So St and Ave have no punctuation just because they are abbreviations.

panjandrum said:

So St and Ave have no punctuation just because they are abbreviations.

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How do you know it's Street and Avenue and not Street and Avenue? ;(

Myridon said:

How do you know it's Street and Avenue and not Street and Avenue? ;(

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Isn't it obvious

Remember that in BE there is a difference between writing and print (published material).

I don't think it would be unusual to see in handwriting things like 'St. George' or 'Baker St.' In printthe distinction between contraction (when the last letter is included) and abbreviation is usually maintained (thereforewe write ed. for editor but eds for editors). Sometimeseven abbreviations do not receive stopsin the general quest for 'lighter' punctuationso I would not be surprised to see 'N Oak Ave'.

Egmont said:

The U.S. Postal Service doesn't concern itself with the rules of English usage when it specifies address formats. Its top concernprobably its only oneis how easy it is for sorting machines to read an address. I don't think its recommendations carry any weight unless one is addressing mailor at least writing an address to be used for that purpose later.

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It should be notedI thinkthat the United States Postal Service prefers addresses to be in all capitals as well as punctuation being omitted. UnfortunatelyI have not been able to find a USPS Web site which states this clearlyand so for the moment will refer to this Web page by another source (which has links to USPS Web pages which are no longer active ).

Againthis is to agree with you that the Post Office's recommendations do not represent the common abbreviation s used American English in other contexts.